The present invention is directed to a right-angled plug-type connector which includes a plate-shaped or strip-shaped retaining member which consists of an insulating material, has a plurality of parallelly extending bores which receive contact elements, and has a pair of spaced-apart projections extending from one side of the member. Each of the contact elements has a portion extending from the other side of the retaining member to form terminal portions and an angled terminal portion extending from the one side and through bores of a fixing plate, which is of an elastically yieldable material and is mounted by a snap fit in the projections of the retaining member to lie in a plane basically at right angles to said other side, to form prongs for connection to a circuit board.
The fixing plate provided in such plug-type connectors holds the angled terminal portion or section of the contact member with its bores, for example, in a desired pattern which may be a grid disposition of the bores of a printed circuit board so that the prongs or free ends of the angled terminal sections can be plugged in in an uncomplicated fashion into the grid bores of the printed circuit board when the plug connector is joined to a printed circuit board. Since the fixing plate must be flexed when it is secured to the actual housing or member of the plug-type connector in order to be inserted between the projections of the retaining member, it is desirable to design this fixing plate or member to be as relatively thin as possible. With the relatively thin design for the fixing plate, the guidance region defined by the length of the bores which is dependent on the thickness of the fixing plate is only relatively short. When one of the prongs of the angled terminal sections misses the allocated bore in the printed circuit board during joining of the plug-type connector to the printed circuit board, the corresponding terminal section will spring out of the fixing plate bore. Over and above this, an oblique attitude of the prongs of the angled terminal sections is promoted when the guide region of the fixing plates are only very short.